By 1930, Stefan Zweig had become the most translated living writer in the world. However, the success of the Viennese born in 1881 was soon overshadowed by Hitler's rise to power. The cosmopolitan left the old continent and settled in Brazil, which he praised as the "land of the future," in 1941. "Finally a place of rest," he hoped upon his arrival in the tropical city of Petrópolis. Six months later, on February 23, 1942, he and his young wife Lotte "voluntarily and with clear minds" left life. On the day he lost his passport, at the age of 58, Stefan Zweig confessed he had discovered "that one loses more with one's homeland than just a patch of defined land." This world citizen, born in Vienna, increasingly lost his grip on life in exile. George Prochnik, himself a descendant of Viennese emigrants, tells this story with great sensitivity.